Friday, February 04, 2005

Take a bite out of PETA

The Center for Consumer Freedom is running a petition calling for on the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the tax-exempt status of the "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals."

Despite its deceptively warm-and-fuzzy public image, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has donated over $150,000 to criminal activists -- including those jailed for arson, burglary, and even attempted murder. In 2001, PETA donated $1,500 to the North American Earth Liberation Front, a criminal organization that the FBI classifies as "domestic terrorists." And since 2000, rank-and-file PETA activists have been arrested over 80 times for breaking various laws during PETA protests. Charges included felony obstruction of government property, criminal mischief, assaulting a cabinet official, felony vandalism, performing obscene acts in public, destruction of federal property, and burglary.

I support and have signed the petition, but I would take it one step further: if PETA is funding domestic terrorists, it should be held accountable under the laws that punish criminal conspiracy.

UPDATE: Regarding some of the comments to my post, I wondered when I wrote it if it would be misconstrued as support for taxation, but I assumed most readers would recognize otherwise. Affirming an individual’s right to their wealth free from confiscation will not be achieved by allowing PETA to serve as a front group for green terrorism as an exempt organization; no one has a right to the irrational nor is the irrational the justification for freedom. Under existing law, tax exempt groups are not permitted to propagandize nor fund criminal activity. In this case, I agree with the Center for Consumer Freedom that PETA’a actions place it outside of the 501(c)(3) rubric and that PETA’s exempt status should be revoked.

The larger battle for emancipation from taxation is just that: a larger battle that will require a philosophic revolution to precede the law being made consistent with the principle of individual rights. In the interim, I support obeying the laws on the grounds that to do otherwise is an invitation for whim-worship and betrayal of the principle that the establishment of a moral government must be founded upon reason and persuasion.